I have recently launched a new website which I'm pretty excited about, called The Cookbook Blog.

You can call it Restaurant Writing Fatigue if you'd like, but the truth is that I have always been extremely passionate about cooking. This new blog is my opportunity to start focusing on cooking from cookbooks, and trying to develop some skills which I find to be extremely useful.

At The Cookbook Blog my goal is to focus on around three cookbooks at a time, to focus on their functionality, to cook from them regularly and furiously, and to eventually write full cookbook reviews.

There will also, soon, be author interviews, recipes, and whatever else I feel like covering.

But at the very least, it's a nice place to check out some pretty pictures of the food I've been cooking these days. I've been cooking a lot.

Must say that Jeffrey, director Sarah McBride, and the whole crew were nothing but fun to hang out with. Episode airs tomorrow, Tuesday, Mach 1st, at 9:30 P.M. (with re-runs during the week). See the schedule here.

Oh, and clearly, I have not been posting much here for a long, long while. That will hopefully change soon. But in the meantime, you can still find my me over at LA Weekly, and as a food critic for Bunker Hill Magazine as well. I do that Twitter thing too.

The internet never ceases to amaze (except when you're looking for something to do on it and can't find anything). Back at the end of the NBA regular season, when the Suns locked up a first round date with the Blazers, I started having a Twitter conversation with the great Henry Abbot over at TrueHoop. He's a Blazers fan, and thought his team, even without Brandon Roy, could beat the Suns. I thought he was being foolish, and suggested a friendly wager. He proposed that it involve the loser eating some bizarre food of the winner's choosing. I told him that I hoped he liked balut.

Well it happened again. A group of supposedly regular human beings thought it would be a good idea to traipse around the city of Los Angeles for 11 plus hours, eating food and drinking alcoholic beverages at 11 (or more) different places. This annual event, 11 In 11, is the brain child of Mark Flaisher and Golden State owner Jason Bernstein. Typically, these people get together from 11 AM until 11 PM, everyone has a few cocktails at the last stop, then go home and crumble into a pile of sodium infused, alcohol soaked slumber. Last year was 11 In 11: China Edition (seen here via Man Bites World, Eater LA and All Kinds of Yum). This year? Jason was a little busy running a restaurant, so he asked Jeff Miller of Thrillist and me to step in and help do the organizing. We, being particularly absurd individuals, thought it would be a good idea to have 11 In 11: Nocturnal Edition, in which we start the whole thing off at 11 PM, showcasing the unsung nightlife diversity of our great city. Here's what happened (with photographs provided by The Great Pelcinary: Dara Hashemi).

This is a trip I wish I'd been on. My good friend Kevin, who also daylights as the GM of the of the Grand Central Oyster Bar in (duh) New York, went on a trip through Spain with some other friends, and uploaded these pictures. Photos include such captions as "Carabineros (Giant Scarlet Spanish Shrimp). Absolutely Mind blowing. The brains are like lobster bisque."